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Set in a miners' camp in California at the time of the gold rush, Puccini's La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) is one of those operas that seem to defy relocation. Stephen Barlow, undaunted, sets it a hundred years later in Las Vegas, the gold-diggers transformed into GIs at the time of atomic testing in the Nevada desert. Minnie is no longer the sharp-shooting cowgirl but roars in on a motorbike and sweeps her lover off into the sunset (with a clever set change) via aeroplane.

It doesn’t really work, unless you can buy the American military as lawless vigilantes with hearts of gold. Perhaps the problem is as much with the work itself, though Vegas is as good a metaphor as any for its intermittent vulgarity.

Minnie’s Act One entrance is one of the most arresting in all opera and Susannah Glanville looks terrific in the role — if one’s allowed to say that. She has the voice to match too — a firm, gleaming tone that on the first night occasionally hardened under pressure. Jeff Gwaltney’s ardent Dick Johnson and Simon Thorpe’s glowering Jack Rance (her disappointed lover) were also admirable.

Not even Stuart Stratford’s taut conducting could project the intricacies of the score (it’s often more subtle than it seems) in this theatre’s wide-open spaces (the extended horizontal stage hardly helps) and Dick Johnson’s visionary Act Three aria came not a moment too soon. Barlow’s ending undercuts the notion of redemption, but who would believe this lot capable of it anyway?